So every HA can be an aircraft counter?

[Landtank]

Originally Posted by LegioX

To bad in PS2 ill be there in my air-to-air cert plane to own any planes trying to get ground kills.

Can't touch the Reaver, too awesome.

[Kaelius]

The javilin could only target AA when the jet / helo was locked on by a SOFLAM or tank 3rd seat (there is a cert for it) when its locked on with this method it ignores flares since its not using the heat signature its using the laser target instead

Better than targeting helos with a solfam was taking a tank with a friend who has the guided shell unlock and you have the 3rd seat unlock.. park on hill laze the target and guided shell will 1shot the helos quickly

[maradine]

Originally Posted by Kaelius

The javilin could only target AA when the jet / helo was locked on by a SOFLAM or tank 3rd seat (there is a cert for it) when its locked on with this method it ignores flares since its not using the heat signature its using the laser target instead

Better than targeting helos with a solfam was taking a tank with a friend who has the guided shell unlock and you have the 3rd seat unlock.. park on hill laze the target and guided shell will 1shot the helos quickly

Yup. That was the last 2 months of my Caspian experience. An Abrams, two mates, and a constant stream of hate messages from chopper pilots.

As Ravenmug mentioned though, they nerfed laser lock in the last big patch. Javs and the fantasy Abrams ATGM now break lock if the aircraft drops flares. To counter this, flares no longer break launcher locks of any kind - just missiles in flight.

Sorry, we're getting a bit off topic here. Was there anything left on the table we haven't covered?

[TheSaltySeagull]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

This. Good AA units got kills off of idiots (which there will be plenty of in a F2P game where every player can pull an aircraft), but AA's true strategic value in PS1 was area denial.

If you were certain that it was only a single guy with a Striker targeting you in PS1, you were generally safe to engage them 1 on 1, but the problem was if you weren't sure what was locking onto you, or if there were multiple lockons. I kind of hope they keep that mechanic for PS2, where you don't know what's locking onto you or how many things are locked on to you at once. You probably won't get a huge number of air kills with a lockon HA AV weapon in PS2, but as long as lockons are a scary enough thing, you'll definitely be able to scare any aircraft away.

You don't get kills or BEP for "area denial".

My issue(hatred) with air cav in PS1 was that they could always escape from ground threats while people on the ground could not escape from air. For example if you are on foot or in a tank etc and a reaver attacks you are pretty much dead. You cant outrun the reaver or kill it unless the pilot is a complete failure. On the reverse side if a reaver gets targeted by an AA max or BFR he just hits space bar and zooms away to safety only to return 30 secs later to again rain down destruction. Or if he is feeling bold he can even bail on top of them with AV and kill them. I never got behind the idea of it was pretty easy for air to kill you but even if you cert heavily into AA the best you could hope for was to "scare away" aircraft unless they just sat there and hover spammed. And even if you did score hits he could just bail and deny you the kill.

In PS2 some of these issues have been addressed such as the bailing issues and infantry and vehicles have access to more effective AA weaponry and the terrain and structures provide better cover against air. And there is the fact that aircraft are harder to fly in general in ps2 rather than the ps1 floating camera. Pilots will have to actually deploy countermeasures and evasive maneuvers to stay alive against ground AA not just laugh at it.

[ZaBa]

Originally Posted by TheSaltySeagull

You don't get kills or BEP for "area denial".

Depends how the mission system works. Imagine something like "if no more than 25% of our forces in this area are killed by aircraft, mission is successful, points for all friendly players running AA builds". It can't really be that hard to make these kinds of soft scoring systems considering you can find them in 10 year old games (e.g.: Il-2 Sturmovik).

Kills really aren't everything.

e/ If anyone wants to complain that this kind of scoring is open to abuse because of the off chance that people might get points for not killing anything at all on the rare occasion that enemy aircraft completely fail to even show up, kindly refer to my above point regarding kills, and what they are not.

[WorldOfForms]

Area denial? Whoop-de-friken-doo.

I don't play an FPS to scare my opponents.

And no, AA wasn't a threat, because after hearing a lock and doing the old turn and burn, all you have to do is creep around, find the AA, ambush it because you have the luxury of using the entire horizon as your cover, and spam it to death.

[Baneblade]

Lol, so I suppose nothing is a threat... you just ran away so they won't scratch the paint.

[WorldOfForms]

So finding cover, creeping around and coming back to kill your opponent counts as running away?

An aircraft easily hunting down the units designed to kill it counts as running away?

In PS1 you could play the role of an aircraft and make it your exclusive mission to hunt down and kill AA. And it wasn't even difficult. So how was AA a serious threat?

[TheSaltySeagull]

Originally Posted by ZaBa

Depends how the mission system works. Imagine something like "if no more than 25% of our forces in this area are killed by aircraft, mission is successful, points for all friendly players running AA builds". It can't really be that hard to make these kinds of soft scoring systems considering you can find them in 10 year old games (e.g.: Il-2 Sturmovik).

Kills really aren't everything.

e/ If anyone wants to complain that this kind of scoring is open to abuse because of the off chance that people might get points for not killing anything at all on the rare occasion that enemy aircraft completely fail to even show up, kindly refer to my above point regarding kills, and what they are not.

This is pure speculation on your part. But if we are to assume its true even with the mission system the AA users in question would have gotten more xp if they could actually kill the air craft in question. Its an FPS game people want to actually shoot and kill people, not hang around and act like a scarecrow for air cav.

In PS1 AA was the only group of certs that when even heavily invested in killing a specific type of enemy you had a fairly low chance of actually killing that enemy type. I dont think this will be an issue in PS2 based on what we have seen so far but we will know for sure in beta.

[EisenKreutzer]

Originally Posted by TheSaltySeagull

Its an FPS game people want to actually shoot and kill people, not hang around and act like a scarecrow for air cav.

This is an assumption on your part, and from what I've seen there are players who would delight in just such a task.

[TheSaltySeagull]

Originally Posted by EisenKreutzer

This is an assumption on your part, and from what I've seen there are players who would delight in just such a task.

Oh please, AA users have been bitching about this issue in PS1 since 2003 so spare me.

[ZaBa]

Originally Posted by TheSaltySeagull

This is pure speculation on your part. But if we are to assume its true even with the mission system the AA users in question would have gotten more xp if they could actually kill the air craft in question. Its an FPS game people want to actually shoot and kill people, not hang around and act like a scarecrow for air cav.

So what you're saying is, you'd rather get kills than play a support role that helps ensure your team can capture and hold an area?

Have you considered that ground-based AA may not be the career for you?


e/ To clarify, yes my earlier post was completely hypothetical. My point was to highlight that there are simple ways to incentivise people to play as AA even if they can't get kills, since I assumed you were one of the "MY POINTS " crowd rather than one of the "MY KILLS " crowd.

[TheSaltySeagull]

Originally Posted by ZaBa

So what you're saying is, you'd rather get kills than play a support role that helps ensure your team can capture and hold an area?

Have you considered that ground-based AA may not be the career for you?

Have you considered that if ground AA could kill the aircraft as opposed to scare them off they accomplish the same support role AND get kills in the process? And with the new resources system in PS2 actually killing aircraft takes them out of the fight and they must spend more resources to get another as opposed to just repairing the same craft or as in PS1 just spawn a new one for free so I am actually having an even bigger impact on the battle.

Edit to your edit: Yes I understand that but the fact remains there is no reason as to why you must choose between providing support and getting kills/xp in the process. If I had to choose between kills or the empire I would choose empire but i see no reason why I must be forced to choose because of poor game design.

[ZaBa]

Poor game design would be AA infantry powerful enough to be able to destroy aircraft before they can run away* without having a significant numerical advantage, when you recall that infantry have zero cost and a relatively short respawn timer.

Turret or vehicle based AA should absolutely be able to wreck aircav, and there's some evidence they can. That's fine since both can be disabled in such a way that they won't be back for a while, same as aircav; they have resource cost and/or cooldown. HA don't, and if you make HA competitive with aircraft in equal numbers, it becomes impossible for aircraft to ever function, as you can't disable HA's ability to be present on the battlefront in any way.

Your actual job as HA wrt vehicles is surprise attacks, opportunistic potshots, and standoff. When it comes to getting air kills you should be looking at MAX (although they probs need a numerical advantage too, if not so large a one), skyguard, or air superiority fighters.


*btw I do think it's stupid that fighters can literally outrun missiles right now; running away should be a matter of duck and weave and drop flares and argh I'm at 20% health why did I fly over that flak nest

[TheSaltySeagull]

Originally Posted by ZaBa

Poor game design would be AA infantry powerful enough to be able to destroy aircraft before they can run away* without having a significant numerical advantage, when you recall that infantry have zero cost and a relatively short respawn timer.

Turret or vehicle based AA should absolutely be able to wreck aircav, and there's some evidence they can. That's fine since both can be disabled in such a way that they won't be back for a while, same as aircav; they have resource cost and/or cooldown. HA don't, and if you make HA competitive with aircraft in equal numbers, it becomes impossible for aircraft to ever function, as you can't disable HA's ability to be present on the battlefront in any way.

Your actual job as HA wrt vehicles is surprise attacks, opportunistic potshots, and standoff. When it comes to getting air kills you should be looking at MAX (although they probs need a numerical advantage too, if not so large a one), skyguard, or air superiority fighters.


*btw I do think it's stupid that fighters can literally outrun missiles right now; running away should be a matter of duck and weave and drop flares and argh I'm at 20% health why did I fly over that flak nest

Agreed, like I said my rant was more so about how AA worked in PS1 and I am happy with how it appears to function in PS2 minus the possibility of air craft being able to outrun missiles. The issue in PS1 was it didn't matter what AA you used air cav could either easily avoid it or just kill it via bailing on top with jammers and AV. It was to the point that there was more than one forum crusade attempt to limit pilots to standard armor and remove the ability for them to carry ha/av when flying. But as I said most of my issues with air craft have been addressed in one way or another in PS2.